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35Pyrrhonian Buddhism: A Philosophical ReconstructionRoutledge. 2021.PYRRHONIAN BUDDHISM: AN IMAGINATIVE RECONSTRUCTION Author: Adrian Kuzminski 279 Donlon Road Fly Creek, NY 13337 USA Description of Pyrrhonian Buddhism: The ancient Greek sceptic philosopher, Pyrrho of Elis, accompanied Alexander the Great to India, where he had contacts with Indian sages, so-called naked philosophers (gymnosophists), among whom were very probably Buddhist mendicants, or sramanas. My work, entitled Pyrrhonian Buddhism, takes seriously the hypothesis that Pyrrho’s contact with ea…Read more
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547The Evident and the Non-Evident: Buddhism through the Lens of PyrrhonismIn Oren Hanner (ed.), Buddhism and Scepticism: Historical, Philosophical, and Comparative Perspectives, Projektverlag. pp. 109-19. 2020.
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39Comment and Discussion: Early Buddhism ReconsideredPhilosophy East and West 68 (3): 974-983. 2018.There is a quiet revolution afoot in our understanding of Early Buddhism, Pyrrhonism, and the Greek, Indian, and Central Asian cultural worlds of Hellenistic antiquity. The implications for the history of philosophy and religion are potentially profound.Christopher Beckwith's recent remarkable and provocative book, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism, is the latest work breaking important new ground in this area.1 It offers no less than a wholesale geographical and chronological…Read more
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24Reply to Charles GoodmanPhilosophy East and West 68 (3): 1007-1009. 2018.I am grateful for Prof. Goodman's comments. Let me try to respond briefly.He asks me to explain how we can recognize "the pragmata as they are, while refraining from judgments about them." In my reading of Sextus Empiricus, what he calls "appearances" are what we perceive immediately and involuntarily, that is, the thoughts and sensations that are present to us as we actually experience them. Visually, these are shapes and colors and tones; audibly, they are sounds of varying intensity and quali…Read more
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19Peter Munz, "the shapes of time: A new look at the philosophy of history" (review)History and Theory 18 (1): 61. 1979.
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15The Paradox of Historical KnowledgeHistory and Theory 12 (3): 269-289. 1973.The problem of universals versus particulars is central to the paradox of historical knowledge. History interpreted in terms of a closed set of universals denies qualitative change; history interpreted in terms of unique events allows no support for generalizations. Three approaches to this problem are: rationalist, intuitive, and philosophic history. Rationalist and intuitive history are unsatisfactory. Rationalist history is deterministic, reducing experiences to strictly defined universals. I…Read more
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20Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented BuddhismLexington Books. 2008.Adrian Kuzminski argues that Pyrrhonism, an ancient Greek philosophy, can best be understood as a Western form of Buddhism. Not only is its founder, Pyrrho, reported to have traveled to India and been influenced by contacts with Indian sages, but a close comparison of ancient Buddhist and Pyrrhonian texts suggests a common philosophical practice, seeking liberation through suspension of judgment with regard to beliefs about non-evident things
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18Names, Descriptions, and PicturesReview of Metaphysics 32 (3). 1979.Analytic philosophers have traditionally held the proper sense of language to be determined in large part by precise descriptions substituted for the vague words and phrases of ordinary usage. These descriptions are usually conceived as lists of abstract attributes. These attributes, it is often assumed, are synthesized by the mind on the occasion of its contact with particular objects. And, once synthesized, they are held to function as the criteria by which the facts of our ordinary experience…Read more
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25Archetypes and Paradigms: History, Politics, and PersonsHistory and Theory 25 (3): 225-247. 1986.The Left is scientific, rational, paradigmatic; its concern is with the networks of relationships within which all things are located and through which all things have their significance. The Right is aesthetic, emotional. It attempts to understand in terms of some concrete specific, an archetype. Hybrids of these two, such as Christianity, Communism, and Fascism, mix paradigm and archetype and are dangerous. With the reification of form and idolatry of image, inhuman criteria of reality are aut…Read more
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140Pyrrhonism and the mādhyamakaPhilosophy East and West 57 (4): 482-511. 2007.: The question of possible Indian influence on Pyrrhonist skepticism was raised long ago by Diogenes Laertius in his biography of Pyrrho. Diogenes tells us that Pyrrho adopted his "most noble philosophy" as a result of his contacts with Indian sages when he accompanied Alexander the Great on his expedition in the fourth century B.C.E. Most modern Western scholars have downplayed Diogenes’ claim as unsubstantiated, but the striking parallels to be found in subsequent ancient Pyrrhonist and Mādhya…Read more
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An introduction to historical thought. By B. A. Haddock (review)History and Theory 20 (3): 352. 1981.
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32Defending Historical RealismHistory and Theory 18 (3): 316-349. 1979.Formerly, history was considered a discipline which attempts to arrive at a description of how the past really was. The truth of historical arguments could then be verified by evidence. This Rankean notion of historical realism is currently rejected by many historians because the evidence upon which it depends is itself theory-bound. This critical or "ironic" perspective, however, like the realist descriptions it criticizes, cannot provide a single method of accounting for events. The structural…Read more
University of Rochester
PhD, 1973
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Other Academic Areas |